Sunday, June 1, 2014

I put in the
soaker hoses today. It’s always an adventure. First, wrestle the hoses out of
their winter storage place in the dead shower stall in the basement (don’t
ask…). Then, lay them out, one bed at a time, connect to the Big Hose, turn it
all on, cross your fingers, and wait for the inevitable geyser.There it was, in the middle of the pumpkin
and zucchini bed. Water spraying everywhere but on the plants. Deep sigh. Turn
the hoses off, find the bag of hose repair parts which I bought in bulk a few
summers ago, dig out the right screwdriver, cut the bad spot out, place the
repair pieces in, tighten down the hose clamps on either side, and turn the
water back on. Good to go for another year.

The new beds are more susceptible to leaks
because of the nature of the system.
Years ago, we had a community garden patch which we used for growing
potatoes and dried beans. After the first year, we bought sweat hoses for the
entire patch, which saved on water and time. When we left the community garden
for more beds in the backyard, we brought the sweat hoses with us, but they
were too long for the beds. Never ones to waste anything, we cut them in half,
wove them through the beds, bridged the gaps with a truly ancient hose, also
cut into pieces, and hose repair kits (and hose clamps), and went to work. It’s
not a bad system, although the old beds, where each sweat hose branches off of
a common tube and can be turned on and off independently, is better. And, every fall, I vow to change the new
beds over—and, every spring, I run the old hoses One More Year.

When I had
finished the hoses, I turned to the brush pile, planning to side-dress the
garlic patch with freshly sifted compost. Mark was working in the back and
directed me to the half full barrel. I picked it up and the last little bit of
handle fell off. It was a good trash can, twenty years ago, but after ten years
of being battered by automatic garbage trucks, we moved it out back to haul
leaves and brush—and compost. I wiggled it across the grass, through the garden
gate, and over to the garlic bed, dumped the contents, and brought it back to
the brush pile. It’s got at least One More Year, I thought.

I walked by one
of the “new” garden beds and saw that the bottom board was rotting through, but
I propped it up with an old piece of garden bed fencing and it was good for One
More Year. After all, the beds will all need replacing soon. When it was dinner
time, Mark carefully took down the picnic benches, which we had fixed last
summer with a couple of solid planks across the top, for, of course, One More
Year.

There’s a
pattern here, one, which separates farmers, even small scale ones, and
gardeners. My friend Maureen has a
beautiful garden, just lovely. She works on it steadily, striking just the
right balance between casual floppiness and tidiness. Something is always blooming. Trees are always pruned. She has
pathways of different materials. She is a Gardener. There is no fraying binder
twine gathered in a bucket, mixed in with the tail end of a ball of yarn. There
is no HUGE pile of bio-mass in the back yard; they send dead hedge pruning off
to the city composting system. She waters by hand, deeply, once a week and
weeds while she works. When I go out to Sunbow Farm, with its amazing soil and
huge plants, it looks more like home. Hoses everywhere, tilting garden benches,
trellises held up with binder twine, old tarps, piles of leaves composting
down…. everything used to the max and beyond.

One More Year.

Cardamon
Cake—from the 1977Moosewood Cookbook

This is best the
same day or the next morning for breakfast. I’ve made it with margarine and
non-fat yogurt, and it is still yummy, but…

2 cups of butter

2 cups of brown
sugar

Cream together
until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl a few times, just to be sure.

Add: 4 eggs and
2 t vanilla. Beat in well.

Sift together:

4 cups of flour

2t BP

2.5 t BS

1.5 t cardamom

.5 t salt

Add and mix. Put
half of the mixture in a tube pan and even out. Then sprinkle .25 c of brown
sugar, 1T cinnamon, and .5 cups of chopped walnuts in. Add the rest of the
cake. Spread out evenly.